I'm back on Blogger! For starters, a look at a recent feature in BYU's beloved daily paper. (Which, by the way, a few weeks ago printed a story about a freshman boy who collects acorns on campus and eats them.) I highlighted my favorites.
Police Beat: Best of the last decade
Compiled by NATALIE CROFTS and ALICIA MOULTON
For the past decade, students have been reading it, talking about it and sticking clips of it on their apartment refrigerators.
But even before the turn of the millennium, the BYU Police Beat had become one of the most oft-read features of The Daily Universe.
The following is a compilation of the decade’s best, most memorable and funniest items in The Daily Universe Police Beat.
We couldn’t make this stuff up if we tried.
Disorderly Conduct
June 29, 2006: A man was found bathing in the fountain of the Joseph F. Smith Building and praying to a rock.
September 6, 2009: Two male subjects were knocking doors in the female area of Wyview Park. They identified themselves as missionaries. When the police arrived the two male students said they thought it was a novel way to meet girls.
Sept. 19, 2006: An individual reported male students singing to female students outside of Hinckley Hall in Helaman Halls. The males were advised to leave due to complaints.
Theft
March 26, 2008: The mother of a BYU student called police when she suspected that her daughter’s roommate stole her butter knife. The mother later called to drop the charges.
Animal Problem
Sept. 6, 2000: A BYU employee was walking near the Harris Fine Arts Center when she heard the cries of a kitten. As she picked up the small kitten, the animal attacked, scratching and biting her. When the police arrived they were unable to locate the offending feline.
July 4, 2009: An owl was found in the former president’s home. An officer communicated with the owl and it left.
Property Damage
Oct. 2001: A glass panel of a telephone booth at Helaman Halls shattered in an attempt to fit eight people into the booth. As a third person entered the phone booth, the pressure caused the panel to break.
Nov. 25, 2005: An unknown person used a washable wipe marker to write obscenities such as “poo-poo” and “poo” on a black Denali parked in Heritage Halls.
Sept. 22, 2006: A female BYU student fell through the ceiling of the Thomas L. Martin Building while playing a game of hide and seek. The student was in an area of the building being remodeled where ceiling tiles had been removed for electrical work. Friends boosted the student into the opening where she fell through other ceiling tiles upon crawling around. She was not hurt.
Nov. 21, 2006: A female student attempted to get the attention of two male students passing by Fox Hall in Heritage Halls by tapping on the glass window of the lobby. The female student shattered the glass window with her tapping.
Domestic Violence
Oct. 23, 2006: An assault was reported in R Hall of Deseret Towers. One male student threw a bug on another male student, who retaliated by spraying shaving cream on the male who threw the bug. Shaving cream got in the eyes of the first student and the argument quickly escalated and became a physical confrontation.
Nov. 9, 2009: Domestic violence was reported at Wyview Park. Two male roommates were arguing over the temperature control setting of the thermostat when things got too heated and one roommate began assaulting the other. The males were separated and one was issued a citation. The cited individual left the apartment and stayed somewhere else for the evening.
Suspicious Behavior
Jan. 22, 2002: A man was reported leaving the bookstore carrying a gun. When the officer located the male they found he was carrying a chrome toy pistol. When the officer asked the 22-year-old male student why he was carrying the gun, he said his roommate told him it would get chicks. The officers cautioned the male on carrying or simulating a weapon before he was released.
Feb. 2, 2007: A student reported a suspicious individual with long gray hair and a beard inside a restricted lab in the Clyde building. Upon arrival, the officer found a mannequin in the reported location.
July 4, 2007: A man was reported making a suspicious phone call to a female in Helaman Halls in which he claimed he was doing a psychology project and then proceeded to hypnotize the female student on the other end of the line. The roommate of the female came home to find her asleep on the floor. The female was reported reacting strangely when certain words are spoken.
Incidents of a similar nature have occurred about two dozen times in the past. There are no suspects, but the incident is still under investigation.
Sept. 12, 2008: A custodian reported screaming near the MCKB at 4 a.m. The screams were later discovered to have come from a female student sprayed by a sidewalk sprinkler.
March 21, 2008: BYU police received a call reporting a male dressed in a bright yellow suit looking for duck eggs near the duck pond. When police arrived at the scene the man was nowhere to be found.
Feb. 16, 2009: A Wymount tenant alerted police of a suspicious man in a suspicious vehicle driving between Wymount laundry facilities. The man turned out to be a Wymount tenant who was looking for an open washer and dryer.
Suspicious Package
Oct. 2001: A female BYU student living in Deseret Towers received a suspicious looking brown paper package in the mail. The student did not recognize the return address and called the police. After investigating, police concluded that a friend had purchased a Beanie Baby on E-Bay and the Beanie Baby has been sent directly to the BYU student.
March 5, 2002: A strange letter was received by KBYU. The letter had a lump in it, so the recipient put the letter in the microwave hoping to neutralize the substance if it was anthrax. The letter started on fire and by the time the recipient could put out the flames, the only readable part of the letter was the return address which read, “Shadows of things to come.” Police are unsure about the substance contained in the letter.
Looking for a quick nonfiction read? Interested in cultural history? Read The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography. Graham Robb has a fun writing and speaking style. (He came to speak at BYU. And he's British, which helps.) As he says in the intro, this book is the result of 14,000 miles in the saddle and 4 years in the library. He did lots of research, rode his bike all over France and then wrote about it. The book is a mishmash of cultural anthropology, a walk through time from the pre-Revolutionary "land of deserts" to 2005 French suburbia. It's full of counterintutive facts about 18th- and 19th-century village life and things that would never have crossed my mind before. Here's the NY Times review if you're interested.
